RUN FROM THE AIR: THE ATOMIC MISSION TO HIROSHIMA

On August 6, 1945, President Harry S. Truman made the official announcement of the Atom Bomb attack on Hiroshima. 'If they do not now accept our terms,' he warned, 'they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.' It was the culmination of long months of scientific endeavour and military preparation . . . and it was the end of conventional warfare. In the future, the mushroom cloud of Hiroshima would loom menacingly over the world, a threat to humanity or the ultimate rejection of global conflict. Churchill said that it had brought peace. Goering was convinced that it would destroy mankind.

Nearly a year before the first Atom Bomb was dropped on Japan, Colonel Paul Tibbets was drawn into the immensely complex network which surrounded what came to be known as the Manhattan Project, a network which included politicians like Roosevelt and Stimson, scientists like Fermi and Bohr, and military personnel of the calibre of General Curtis LeMay. It was Tibbets who had been selected to command the 509th Composite Group which was soon to gather at Wendover, Utah. It was Tibbets who was destined to pilot the plane which would drop a bomb so powerful that it would explode with a force of 20,000 tons of normal high explosive.

As the months of secret training at Wendover continued, often in an atmosphere of doubt and antipathy, the statesmen in Washington deliberated on which Japanese city should be bombed the holy city of Kyoto, Tokyo, Kokura were all possible targets and how much information should be given to the Russians. In Japan, the will to triumph over the Americans began to centre on the kamikaze pilots and the one-man suicidal submarines. Hiroshima was chosen as military headquarters for the Japanese High Command charged with repulsing the expected American invasion. While they built up the armed forces in and around the city, the mayor made contingency plans to protect the civil population. But the anti-aircraft batteries waited, apparently in vain, for American planes; many people thought that Hiroshima was being spared, on the express order of President Roosevelt. Then, at 2.45 a.m. on August 6th, Tibbets' plane, the Enola Gay, took off from the American-occupied island of Tinian. The point of no return had been reached.

Ruin from the Air, based on interviews, diaries, government documents and a wealth of published and unpublished material, is not merely the first full story of how the atomic bomb was dropped, it is also the first account of how it very nearly was not used. Here, too, is the complete and bizarre espionage story surrounding the Manhattan Project, played out against the Big Three conference at Potsdam, and involving secret encounters between Japanese and American agents in war-ravaged Europe. Ruin from the Air is indeed one of the most amazing books about the Second World War ever to have been published, a story of high drama and cumulative excitement. The authors have deliberately avoided making judgements. Instead, they have allowed the facts to speak for themselves, and the facts are extraordinary.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS 

Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts are the authors of five previous books: The Day the World Ended (now being made into a major motion picture), Voyage of the Damned (recently released as a feature film), Shipwreck (which won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1973), The San Francisco Earthquake (main selection of the Book of the Month Club), and The Day Guernica Died. All five books have been praised by the. critics and have become best- sellers. Gordon Thomas lives in Ireland and Max Morgan Witts in London.